Per Facebook, the Song of Ice and Fire author once again stressed that it’s incredibly unlikely HBO will progress with all five prequel series; rather, the Powers That Be will cherry-pick one story pitch and flesh out its Game of Thrones prequel from there. Beyond that, little is known about HBO’s future plans – for instance, will this successor span multiple seasons? – but Martin did allude to “two or three” series reaching the pilot stage.

Said he:

You should not expect to see all five shows, though, at least not immediately.. much as I might love the idea, HBO is not about to become the GAME OF THRONES network… but we could possibly see two or even three make it to the pilot stage, with one series emerging on air in 2019 or 2020… and the others maybe later, if they come out as well as we all hope.

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It’s an exciting time for the Game of Thrones community, then, even if season 8 will herald the beginning of the end. With production due to commence across parts of Northern Ireland in October, HBO recently announced the four directors tasked with helming Thrones‘ six-part final season. It’s an overly familiar roster of talent, too, what with series showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss locked in, along with Miguel Sapochnik (“Hardhome, “Battle of the Bastards”) and David Nutter (““The Dance of Dragons”).

Following an explosive seventh season, which ended with the Night King swooping into Westeros with a gargantuan undead army in tow, Game of Thrones is expected to jump-start production on season 8 late next month. Word is HBO has earmarked summer 2019 as a potential release window, so we imagine the network will hold fire on that successor series lest it risk over-saturation. Sometimes you really can have too much of a good thing.